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EXLIBRIS 


JOSEPHINE 

AND.  ROYAL 

FISHER 


I'-'-.M'Iffli 


tfYSTIC 
^PEKS 
SITHER. 


tihtary  of ^he  t:heolo0icd  ^tminavy 

PRINCETON  .  NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 


Father  Haughney 


% 


THE  LOVE  OF  MAN  IS  OUR  CONCRETE 
OBJECT  LESSON  IN  THE  KINDERGARTEN  OF 
LOVE,  AND  IF  WE  LEARN  THAT  WELL,  AND 
AS  FAST  AS  WE  LEARN  THAT  WELL,  THE 
LOVE  OF  GOD  GROWS  IN  US,  AND  WE 
BECOME  RELIGIOUS 


^ii 


UNTO    ME" 


^,0^.11  ^f^^ 


"UNTO      Mt'h,   iriop 


^A 


,         BY 

WALTER  "rAUSCHENBUSCH 

AUTHOR   OF    "CHRISTIANITY    AND    THE    SOCIAL    CRISIS, 
"for   god    and    THE    PEOPLE" 


THE    PILGRIM    PRESS 

BOSTON  NEW   YORK  CHICAGO 


COPYRIGHT,  I9I2 
BY  LUTHER  H.  GARY 


Published^  October ^  igi2 


THE'PLIMPTON' PRESS 
[WD*  O] 

NORWOOD*  MASS-U'S' A 


CONTENTS 


PACE 


The  Religious  Quality   of   Social 

Work 9 

Social  Work  is  Christian  Work  12 
Love  for  God  Demands  Love  for 

Men 16 

Love   for  Men   Trains  the    Love 

FOR  God 18 

Social     Work     Brings     a     New 

Experience  of  Religion  ...  21 
Social    Work    and    the   Cross   of 

Christ 25 

Religion    has  the    Master  Word 

OF  Life 29 


« 


UNTO   ME" 


"UNTO    ME" 


The  Religious  Quality  of 
Social  Work 


Wi 


HEN  Jesus  looked  forward  to 
the  great  climax  of  History,  the 
Last  Judgment,  he  saw  it  as  a  process 
by  which  the  inner  significance  of 
their  own  actions  and  relations  would 
be  revealed  to  men.  Those  men  on 
his  right  hand  whom  he  welcomed 
to  their  reward  had  never  realized 
the  high  quality  of  their  own  ac- 
tions. Here  was  a  man  who  had 
seen  a  work-mate  in  the  heat  of  the 
harvest-time  eating  a  crust,  and  he 
had  shared  the  contents  of  his 
dinner-pail  with  him  and  gone  on 
half-rations  himself.  Here  was  an- 
other who  had  seen  a  foot-sore  and 
dusty  stranger  limping  into  the  vil- 
lage at  dusk,  and  had  taken  him 
home,    helped    him    clean    up,    and 

[9] 


^'UNTO     ME*' 


turned  over  his  bed  to  him  while 
he  slept  on  the  earthen  floor.  That 
one  yonder  had  restored  the  self- 
respect  of  a  poor  neighbor  by  setting 
him  up  in  a  new  suit  of  clothes. 
This  one  had  visited  a  poor  debtor 
pining  in  prison  and  brought  him 
food  and  human  comfort  in  his 
hopelessness.  They  all  thought  they 
had  done  it  for  folks,  for  dusty, 
sweaty,  tired,  discouraged  individ- 
uals. But  Jesus  says:  ''Oh,  no,  ye 
did  it  unto  me.  My  life  is  so  identi- 
fied with  my  brethren  that  when  ye 
fed  and  clothed  them,  ye  fed  and 
clothed  me.  God  is  living  in  these 
worn  human  bodies.  When  ye  com- 
forted them,  ye  comforted  God." 

And  those  others  on  the  left  side 
—  they,  too,  had  not  realized  the 
gravity  of  their  own  actions. 
"Lord,  when  saw  we  thee  hungry, 
or  athirst,  or  a  stranger,  or  naked, 
or  sick,  or  in  prison,  and  did  not 
minister  unto  thee?"  They  had 
seen  a  questionable  stranger  at  their 
[lo] 


*'UNTO      me" 


door  and  had  shaken  their  heads. 
They  had  not  felt  that  they  had 
any  call  to  visit  the  disreputable 
persons  imprisoned  for  debt.  But 
thereby  they  had  isolated  themselves  \y 
from  their  kind,  and  missed  con- 
tact with  God  who  dwells  in  hu- 
manity. They  failed  to  reckon  with 
the  social  consciousness  of  Christ 
and  with  God's  sense  of  social  soli- 
darity, and  so  they  stand  on  the 
left  side  of  the  Judge,  astonished 
and  perplexed. 

We  are  all  blind  to  the  religious 
significance  of  our  own  lives.  We 
are  always  in  danger  of  doing  high 
and  holy  things  in  a  petty  and 
worldly  way.  The  ministers  of  re- 
ligion have  often  been  mere  slaves 
of  the  temple,  dusting  the  sacred  V 
implements  with  fussy  zeal,  but 
forgetful  of  the  awful  presence  of 
the  god.  The  ministers  of  charity 
are  the  same  grade  of  men  and  in 
the  same  temptation.  They  may 
grow  absorbed  in  oiling  the  wheels 

[II] 


"unto 


of  their  charitable  machine  and  love 
to  hear  it  purr,  but  fail  to  realize 
how  holy  their  work  really  is.  Jesus 
was  always  uncovering  the  spiritual 
meaning  in  the  common  actions  of 
life.  V  To  him  the  giving  of  a  cup 
of  cold  water  was  a  sacrament  of 
humanity. '  Social  workers  are  deal- 
ing with  people,  with  folks,  in  a  very 
human  way.  But  they  are  also 
dealing  with  the  Christ  who  is  the 
champion  and  saviour  of  the  people, 
and  with  the  eternal  God  in  whom 
these  men  live  and  move  and  have 
their  being. 

Social  Work  is  Christian 
Work 

Social  workers  are  in  the  direct 
line  of  apostolic  succession.  Like 
the  Son  of  Man  they  seek  and  save 
the  lost.  Their  work  is  redemptive 
work.  When  they  loosen  the  clutch 
of  greed  from  the  thin  arm  of  the 
child-worker;    when  they  guide  the 

[12] 


"unto 


immigrant  safely  past  the  grasping 
hands  to  a  place  where  he  can  work 
and  establish  his  home  in  cleanli- 
ness and  hope;  when  they  put  eyes 
on  the  finger-tips  of  the  blind ;  w  hen 
they  lead  the  deaf  out  of  the  prison- 
house  of  loneliness  and  give  them 
speech  with  their  kind;  when  they 
save  the  demoniacs  of  alcoholism; 
when  they  seek  to  turn  our  prisons 
into  institutions  of  social  healing 
and  education  instead  of  being  steam- 
rollers and  stone-crushers  of  human- 
ity; when  they  try  to  change  the 
cold  stare  of  respectability  with 
which  we  Pharisees  have  always  re- 
garded the  fallen  woman,  into  a 
Christlike  look  of  sympathy  and 
understanding;  they  are  treading 
step  by  step  in  the  footprints  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  They  are  doing 
with  modern  scientific  methods  and 
with  the  large  resources  of  mod- 
ern organization  what  he  did  in 
Galilee,  and  they  have  a  right  to 
feel  the   nearness  and  love  of  their 

[13] 


"unto    me" 


Heavenly  Father  in  doing  it,  just  as 
he  felt  it. 

They  are  doing  Christian  work 
when  they  do  social  work,  even  if 
they  themselves  disclaim  religious 
motives  or  even  repudiate  religious 
faith.  Jesus  found  society  nicely 
separated  into  pious  people  on  the 
one  side  and  publicans  and  sinners 
on  the  other,  but  he  found  the  clas- 
sification not  in  harmony  with  the 
facts.  The  publicans  and  harlots 
were  showing  all  the  symptoms  of 
religion  and  the  Pharisees  turned 
their  backs  on  God  whenever  they 
had  a  chance.  He  formulated  this 
remarkable  observation  in  a  little 
parable.  He  said  a  man  had  two 
sons  and  asked  both  to  go  to  work 
in  the  vineyard.  One  politely  as- 
sured his  father  that  he  would,  but 
he  stayed  in  the  rocking-chair  on  the 
veranda.  The  other  grumbled  that 
he  wouldn't,  but  he  got  on  the  job. 
Jesus  wanted  to  know  which  of  the 
two  did   the  will  of  his  father.     I 

[14] 


"unto 


judge  that  he  would  have  a  friendly 
sense  of  companionship  with  a  social 
worker  who  doubted  the  immortahty 
of  the  soul,  more  than  with  an  ortho- 
dox man  who  paid  the  soul  six  \N. 
dollars  a  week  for  ten-hour  labor. 

Whenever  the  National  Confer- 
ence of  Charities  and  Correction 
meets,  it  means  more  than  the 
deliberations  of  a  few  hundred  men 
and  women.  It  is  the  collective 
mind  of  our  nation  focused  on 
questions  of  salvation.  The  intel- 
ligence which  they  bring  to  bear  on 
problems  of  housing  or  prison  reform 
is  not  merely  their  personal  clever- 
ness, but  the  accumulated  social 
wisdom  of  mankind  which  has  been 
slowly  secreted  and  distilled  by  the 
thought  and  labor  of  generations  of 
men  and  women  who  loved  poor 
humanity  and  desired  its  salvation. 
The  righteous  and  loving  will  that 
throbs  and  vibrates  through  such 
gatherings  is  a  manifestation  of 
vaster  spiritual  forces.  All  the  past 
[IS] 


"unto    me" 

is  there.  The  dead  saints  and 
^  prophets  of  humanity  are  there. 
They  left  the  impact  of  their  indig- 
nation and  compassion  in  society, 
and  that  has  created  the  growing 
sense  of  social  solidarity.  Their  Hfe 
has  been  wrought  into  the  continu- 
ous common  life  of  the  race  as  its 
noblest  fiber.  ^But  back  of  the  moral 
leaders  of  mankind  was  Jesus  Christ, 
whose  mind  and  spirit  was  working 
in  their  hearts  and  intellects.y  No 
gathering  of  social  workers  '  today 
can  dissociate  its  thoughts  and  emo- 
tions from  him,  or  understand  its 
own  forces  without  realizing  the 
presence  of  God. 

Love  for  God  Demands  Love 

FOR  Men 

Men  tell  us  that  religion  ought  to 
have  an  ethical  outcome  and  that 
love  to  God  is  inseparable  from  love 
to  men.  They  say  it  as  if  that 
were  a  new  discovery.  It  ought  to 
[i6] 


"unto    me" 


be  a  truism  by  this  time.  It  was 
once  the  passionate  message  of  the 
Hebrew  prophets,  and  was  embodied 
in  the  Christian  rehgion  as  one  of 
its  axiomatic  doctrines.  "Whoso- 
ever doeth  not  righteousness  is  not 
of  God,  neither  he  ijjiat  loveth 
not  his  brother.  For  this  is  the 
message  which  ye  heard  from  the 
beginning,  that  we  should  love  one 
another."  These  words  were  meant 
to  repudiate  the  claim  to  Christian 
standing  of  any  man  whose  religion 
was  not  grounded  deep  in  active  and 
passionate  good  will  toward  men. 

Moreover,  in  Christianity  love 
must  mean  more  than  mild  benevo- 
lence of  feeling.  Love  gets  its  Chris- 
tian definition  from  the  personality 
of  Jesus  and  from  his  death:  ''Hereby 
have  we  come  to  a  comprehension 
of  love,  by  the  fact  that  he  laid 
down  his  life  for  us;  and  we  ought 
to  lay  down  our  life  for  the  brethren. 
But  whoso  hath  the  world's  goods, 
and  beholdeth  his  brother  in  need, 

[17] 


"unto    me" 


and  shutteth  up  his  compassion 
from  him,  how  doth  the  love  of 
God  abide  in  him?"  This  passage 
shows  how  swiftly  a  Christian  mind 
passed  from  the  nature  of  love  as 
defined  by  the  death  of  Christ  to 
social  action  in  matters  of  property 
relations. 

Thus  the  insistence  that  love  to 
God  must  have  its  immediate  result 
and  counterpoise  in  love  for  men  is 
one  of  the  rudiments  of  Christian 
faith  and  feeling.  But  that  does 
not  exhaust  the  relations  between 
the  love  of  God  and  the  love  of  man. 
The  causal  relation  runs  the  other 
way  too. 

^'  Love  for  Men  Trains  the 
Love  for  God  / 

'It  is  by  loving  men  that  we  enter 

into  a  living  loye  for  God.     Social 

work  may  be  a  gateway  to  conscious 

religion. 

An  actual  love  for  God  is  a  com- 

[18] 


"unto 


monplace  in  religious  talk,  but  it  is 
not  a  common  thing  in  fact.  Aris- 
totle questioned  if  so  high  a  feeling 
were  possible.  To  have  a  strong 
sense  of  desire  and  joy  and  fellow- 
ship going  out  toward  that  great, 
unseen,  intangible  Power  which  fills 
the  universe  is  nothing  slight,  but 
the  highest  attainment  in  the  evo- 
lution of  character,  the  fragrant 
blossoming  of  our  spiritual  nature. 

We  assume  that  love  to  God  must 
come  first  and  is  the  proper  starting 
point  and  foundation  for  the  love 
of  man.  Is  it  not  just  as  much  the 
other  way.?  The  love  of  man  is 
our  concrete  object  lesson  in  the 
kindergarten  of  love,  and  if  we  learn 
that  well,  and  as  fast  as  we  learn 
that  well,  the  love  of  God  grows  in 
us,  and  we  become  religious.  This 
is  biblical  doctrine.  "  He  that  loveth 
not  his  brother  whom  he  hath  seen, 
how  can  he  love  God  whom  he  hath 
not  seen?"  He  that  will  not  learn 
the  multiplication  tables  which  are 

[19] 


"unto 


easy,  how  can  he  comprehend  algebra 
which  is  hard?  "No  man  hath  be- 
held God  at  any  time.  If  we  love 
one  another,  God  abideth  in  us  and 
his  love  is  perfected  in  us."  In 
other  words,  God  is  invisible  and 
inaccessible  in  himself,  but  if  we 
love  one  another,  we  make  a  place 
for  him  in  our  own  life  and  will 
realize  him  and  his  love. 

To  love  men,  then,  is  an  avenue  to 
the  living  experience  of  God.  There 
may  be  other  paths  that  lead  to  him, 
such  as  the  solitary  search  for  truth, 
or  the  lonely  way  of  mystic  contem- 
plation. But  love  is  the  surest  way 
with  fewest  pitfalls,  the  broad  way 
open  to  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men,  and  the  way  consecrated  by 
Jesus  Christ.  We  should  expect, 
therefore,  that  those  who  are  en- 
gaged in  social  work  with  a  really 
loving  spirit  will  find  religion  grow- 
ing in  them.  If  their  religion  in  the 
past  has  been  merely  formal,  it 
ought    to   grow   warm    and    living. 

[20] 


"unto 


If  it  has  been  in  the  immature  stage 
of  dogmatism  and  rituahsm,  it  ought 
to  come  to  freedom  and  maturity. 
We  might  even  look  in  social  work 
for  that  most  difficult  triumph  in 
the  breeding  of  religion,  the  restora- 
tion of  conscious  religion  where  it 
was  dead. 

Social  Work  Brings  a  New 
Experience  of  Religion 

We  all  have  our  private  religious 
history,  and  most  of  us  have  suf- 
fered in  the  course  of  it.  As  modern 
men  we  have  passed  through  the 
scientific  and  philosophical  doubt  of 
this  age  of  transition.  For  many 
of  us  the  pillars  that  used  to  sup- 
port religion  in  our  childhood  have 
crumbled  and  fallen.  If  we  have 
always  kept  a  roof  over  our  heads 
^'mid  all  the  stormy  winds  that 
blow,"  we  have  been  fortunate. 
The  number  of  educated  men  and 
women  who  have  had  a  time  when 


"unto 


/ 


they  regarded  themselves  as  non- 
rehgious  is  probably  greater  than 
we  know.  Some  social  workers  have 
turned  from  the  collapse  of  their 
religion  to  social  work  as  the  best 
thing  left  to  them  after  the  wreck, 
as  the  worthiest  substitute  for  the 
beauty  of  the  religion  which  they 
had  lost. 

/  But  some  of  them  at  least  are 
watching  the  growth  of  a  new  reli- 
gious life  in  their  minds.  It  may 
be  timid  and  unostentatious  like  a 
woodland  anemone,  but  it  is  abso- 
lutely their  own.  It  was  not  sown  in 
straight  rows  by  the  machine-drill  of 
the  church,  but  is  the  product  of  their 
own  seeking  and  experience,  and 
they  love  it  almost  too  much  to 
talk  of  it.^ 

Social  workers,  if  they  are  really 
candid  observers  of  the  facts  of 
human  life  and  not  merely  doc- 
trinaires, are  compelled  to  realize 
the  tremendous  and  subtle  power 
of  religion  in  actual  life.     They  find 

[22] 


"unto    me" 


It  exerting  moral  control  over  pas- 
sion, stimulating  growth  and  char- 
acter in  the  young,  occasionally  even 
exerting  a  transforming  power  in 
mature  persons  that  seems  almost 
miraculous.  They  encounter  reli- 
gion as  one  of  the  great  realities  of 
life,  and  if  they  are  open-minded 
toward  reality,  they  learn  to  bow  to 
it.  They  even  begin  to  co-operate 
with  its  forces  and  to  summon  them 
to  their  aid,  and  no  man  can  cast 
out  devils  in  the  name  of  Christ  ^ 
and    then   speak   lightly   of   him. 

The  mysteriousness  of  life  awakens 
the  religious  sense  within  them  as 
they  handle  it.  For  human  life  be- 
comes more  mysterious  the  better 
we  know  it.  Humanum  cap  ax  divini, 
said  an  ancient  thinker.  We  meet 
some  plain  man,  some  homely  little  v 
woman,  rough  and  unpromising 
pebbles  on  the  shores  of  life;  we 
get  to  know  them  well,  and  we  dis- 
cover in  them  contritions  and  aspi- 
rations, heroisms  and  agonies.  ^We 

[23] 


"unto    me" 

hold  a  human  hand,  but  we  can  feel 
^  God's  life  pulsing  in  it  if  we  know 
where  to  feel  for  the  pulsey  If  we 
have  failed  to  find  anything  beauti- 
ful and  divine  in  any  life  whatever 
it  is  probably  because  we  do  not 
yet  know  it  well  enough,  or  because 
our  social  inexperience  or  our  preju- 
dices keep  us  from  seeing.  That  is 
what  Jesus  wanted  to  emphasize 
in  that  judgment  scene,  that  every 
atom  of  humanity  has  a  divine 
value  and  significance  as  such,  not 
simply  the  choice  specimens  of  man- 
kind, but  the  little  ones,  so  that 
anything  done  to  the  least  is  done 
to  God.  We  are  never  in  doubt  of 
the  mvstic  value  of  a  human  being 
when  it  happens  to  be  our  own 
child.     God  isn't  either. 

These  are  the  experiences  that 
come  to  us  in  social  work  and  the 
valuations  we  gain  through  it  if  it 
really  does  its  work  in  us.  Indeed, 
this  is  one  of  the  tests  of  our  social 
work:  has  it  brought  us  this  insight? 

[24] 


"unto    me" 


Is  it  distilling  wonder  and  reverence, 
tenderness  and  awe  in  us?  Has^ 
our  work  for  men  quickened  and 
deepened  our  sense  of  God?  If  it 
has  not,  then  it  has  not  done  much 
for  us,  and  it  is  questionable  if  it 
has  done  anything  lasting  for  others^ 
God  can  raise  up  hustlers  and  busy- 
bodies  almost  anywhere.  They  are 
cheap,  the  human  brothers  of  the 
clanking  machines  in  our  factories. 
On  the  other  hand  if  our  work  for 
men  is  earning  us  the  tremendous 
perquisite  of  a  living  knowledge  of 
God,  let  us  be  thankful  and  go  ahead. 
It  is  worth  a  lifetime  to  get  that. 

Social  Work  and  the  Cross 
OF  Christ 

Some  one  may  say  that  these 
religious  experiences  of  which  we 
have  spoken  are  vague  and  misty 
and  not  specifically  Christian.  I 
should  reply  that  on  the  contrary 
they  may  be  more  peculiarly  Chris- 


S) 


"unto 


tian  than  any  other  kind  of  rehgious 
experience. 

Social  workers  know  that  genuine 
social  service  is  nothing  soft-handed 
and  perfumed.  It  is  exhausting, 
baffling,  dirty  work,  that  often  takes 
them  among  ugly  sights,  vile  sounds, 
and  what  is  perhaps  hardest  for 
some  of  us,  bad  smells.  It  loads 
them  up  with  the  troubles  of  others, 
and  they  bear  their  griefs  and  carry 
their  sorrows  like  the  one  who  was 
"a  man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted 
with  grief." 

Any  social  work  that  deals  with 
the  causes  of  misery  involves  fight- 
ing, for  the  causes  of  misery  are 
never  only  in  the  people  who  are 
miserable.  They  are  chiefly  in  those 
who  profit  by  their  misery.  The 
lower  tenth  of  society  is  submerged 
yf  because  the  upper  tenth  is  riding  on 
the  other  nine  tenths  and  putting 
the  heads  of  some  under  water. 
The  word  redemption  means  liter- 
ally   emancipation     and     liberation 

[26] 


UNTO      ME'' 

from  slavery.  It  involves  making 
the  exploiters  quit  exploiting.  But 
if  any  one  tries  to  make  them  stop 
they  will  strike  back  and  hurt  him. 
No  one  will  move  very  far  on  the 
way  of  social  relief  without  colliding 
with  strong  and  active  forces,  per- 
haps with  the  controlling  forces  of 
society,  and  being  punished  for  his 
interference  with  their  income. 

In  that  case  the  social  worker 
comes  into  very  intimate  touch  with 
Christ  by  sharing  his  sufferings  for 
humanity,  for  Jesus  too  got  hurt 
because  he  collided  with  the  selfish 
interests  of  the  ruling  classes.  If  a 
man  attacks  child-labor  or  the  un- 
derpayment of  women  in  industry, 
and  finds  himself  misunderstood  or 
abused,  or  perhaps  without  position 
and  income,  his  pain  is  part  of  that 
vicarious  suffering  by  which  the 
redemption  of  humanity  is  achieved. 
Without  the  shedding  of  blood  in 
some  form  there  has  never  been 
cessation  of  sin. 

[27] 


"unto    me" 


For  ages  the  cross  of  Christ  has 
stood  at  the  center  of  Christian 
theology.  But  many  good  men  who 
are  loud  in  their  insistence  on  the 
cross  as  the  only  means  of  salvation 
have  apparently  never  had  any  ex- 
perience of  the  pain  of  the  cross. 
They  do  not  "bear  the  marks  of 
the  Lord  Jesus."  There  are  no 
scars  on  them  anywhere.  Their  re- 
ligion has  served  to  make  them 
respected.  All  men  like  them  for 
their  goodness.  But  their  goodness 
was  never  so  good  that  it  waked  up 
the  devil.  They  never  antagonized 
profitable  sin;  so  they  never  got 
hurt.  But  in  that  case  their  religion 
is  not  as  specifically  Christian  as 
they  think  it  is. 

Social  work,  the  kind  that  deals 
with  the  causes  of  misery,  is  today 
almost  the  only  form  of  Christian 
work  that  involves  the  risk  of  perse- 
cution. Thereby  it  opens  to  us  a 
living  experience  of  the  cross  of 
Christ  and  a  fellow-feeling  with  all 

[28] 


"unto 


his  followers  of  the  Church  Militant, 
which  has  moved  down  the  centuries 
in  a  thin  red  line,  but  to  which  the 
Church  Dormant  owes  all  it  enjoys 
of  the  higher  life.  Such  social  work 
throws  us  back  in  loneliness  on  God 
and  we  find  him  near.  Let  no  one 
who  suffers  unselfishly  for  the  cause 
of  truth  or  justice  or  liberty  say  that 
he  is  not  religious  or  not  a  Christian. 
His  life  belies  his  professions.  He  is 
a  poor  hypocrite  of  infidelity. 

Religion  has  the  Master 
Word  of  Life 

Thus  social  work  is  full  of  religious 
qualities.  It  is  both  the  product  and 
the  cause  of  genuine  religion.  It 
offers  religious  experiences  to  be 
found  nowhere  else  in  that  fulness. 
The  only  question  is  if  social  workers 
become  conscious  of  what  they  are 
doing  and  experiencing,  and  ''en- 
joy religion."  A  savage  will  ap- 
ply the  force  of  leverage,  but  our 

[29] 


power  over  nature  increases  when 
we  understand  the  laws  that  govern 
that  force  and  master  it  by  obeying 
it.  Men  are  always  stretching  out 
their  hands  to  us  and  crying  dumbly: 
"Are  you  the  one  that  can  help  us? 
Have  you  got  God  within  you  so 
that  you  have  love  to  understand  us 
and  power  to  save  us?"  The  people 
whom  we  have  to  help  in  our  charities 
and  corrections  have  drifted  from 
their  anchorage.  They  have  gone 
astray  like  lost  sheep,  as  Jesus 
called  them.  ^  A  man  or  woman  of 
strong  and  stable  faith,  who  knows 
something  of  the  meaning  of  life, 
can  become  the  center  of  their  solar 
system,  the  power  they  swear  by, 
the  rallying  point  of  one  more  effort^ 
Stability  and  quietness  are  them- 
selves powers  of  social  healing  and 
restoration.  But  only  a  mature  re- 
ligious life  can  give  that  power  in 
its  fulness. 

Religion    has    the    master    word 
in    human    life.     When    patriotism, 

1 30] 


"unto    me 


poetry,  science,  or  philosophy  rises 
to  its  highest  level,  it  becomes  re- 
ligious. In  the  great  moments  of 
life,  either  in  joy  or  sorrow,  nothing 
suffices  except  religion.  If  the 
Titanic  had  sunk  while  the  band  was 
playing  anything  but  a  religious 
song,  it  would  have  been  felt  as  a 
dissonance.  Nearly  all  forms  of 
charity  and  human  betterment  began 
in  the  souls  of  men  and  women  who 
had  the  substance  of  religion  in 
them.  Their  impulses  of  mercy  or 
anger  may  have  been  uninstructed, 
but  at  least  they  saw  and  struck  out 
before  science  or  government  moved. 
Living  religion  gives  prophetic  in- 
sight and  daring,  and  so  raises  up 
the  pioneers  of  love  and  justice. 
Other  things  being  equal,  a  man 
of  religious  faith  and  temper  is  al- 
ways the  wiser  and  stronger.  The  ^ 
religious  souls  are  the  master  souls. 


[31] 


DATE  DUE 

■-.n.^Sri-'-i 

•fe 

1 

^.«««*W«W,i 

s. 

— r^ 

MMW^ 

ccd-^iMR 

!«■-'          ■  ^  •.■    '- 

DEMCO  38- 

297 

OTHER  THINGS  BEING  EQUAL,  A  MAN  OF 
RELIGIOUS  FAITH  AND  TEMPER  IS  ALWAYS 
THE  WISER  AND  STRONGER.  THE  RELIG- 
IOUS  SOULS   ARE  THE   MASTER   SOULS. 


JESUS  IS  ALWAYS  UNCOVERING  THE  SPIRIT- 
UAL MEANING  IN  THE  COMMON  ACTIONS 
OF  LIFE.  TO  HIM,  THE  GIVING  OF  A  CUP 
OF  COLD  WATER  WAS  A  SACRAMENT  OF 
HUMANITY. 


"■'-.^^^'^P^MiiliiJiLJiml^^ 


BV4400 .R24 

"Unto  me," 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00014  7902 


